Women in Mathematics, Science, and Engineering

Dani Al Sheikh Aleais

April 17, 2018

Women in Mathematics, Science, and Engineering

Summary:1 Video#1 Why we have too few women leaders

The Ted talk,  “why we only have too few women leaders” is a message from Sheryl Sandberg on how to stay in the workplace. Sandberg provides three tips which are, one, sit at the table. Two, make your partner a real partner. Three, don’t leave before you leave.  

 Sit at the table– Most men usually tend to oversell themselves while women on the hand underestimate their capabilities. Importantly, men attribute their success to themselves, while women on the other hand will say they got lucky, or someone guided them. No-one gets the promotion if they don’t believe they deserve it. This point is about having the confidence to sell yourself, and let yourself sit at the table or meeting where important decisions are made.

Make your partner a real partner– Women have made more progress in the workforce than what they have in the workforce. Even as full time workers, women do about 2 times the housework and three times the childrearing compared to their full time husbands. The disgrace affects men as well, with men sometimes differently by other parents at playdates. Domestic duties such as house cleaning and housekeeping need to be as respected as success in the workforce to get more equality.

Don’t leave before you leave – some actions women take to stay in the workplace can sometimes lead them out. When a women decides to have a baby, its best if she thinks about how she could manage her time and never just her focus on work. Once you have a child it is really hard to go back to work and leave the child alone. When the work is challenging then you are able to get back to it because it will push you.

Summary: 2 Video#2 Marissa Mayer's Top 10 Rules For Success

Marissa Mayers is an American businesswoman and the president and CEO of yahoo. Previously she was an executive and key spokesperson for Google. Marissa Mayers top 10 rules for business and success are rule #1 to find your rhythm, . Marissa always had a philosophy around balance, she does not believe in balance yet she believes in finding a rhythm where you can know yourself well enough that you can avoid resentment and burnout. Rule#2 Do something you are not ready to do.  Pushing through a discomfort zone will teach a lot more about yourself. For example, you will learn to do something you did not think you were able to do, or you will learn where your limits are. Rule#3 Balance between innovation and execution. If you want to execute perfectly, get the design exactly right, really work through all the details. On the other hand, if you want to find new ideas working in small teams is the go to. Rule #4 Ruthlessly prioritize. If you want to get everything done, then you have to ruthlessly prioritize. In Marissa’s life there are three things which she has her priority on “God, Family, and yahoo in that order”. Rule #5 Surround yourself with smart people. Find the smartest people and surround yourself with the. Working with smart people will challenge to do your best and grow. When there are better players around you, you will get better. Rule #6 create a strong culture. Yahoo focus on people creates its own culture, and by amplifying it, you will find great energy, and that energy is what you can harness into that innovation by taking that energy around the culture and find fun ways to apply it that can be really affecting for end users. Rule #7 work in small teams. At yahoo, the company works in small teams. keeping the teams really small led to a sense of empowerment. also at yahoo they try to avoid meetings, yet one of the great things that happen in small teams is you can put them all in the same office. Rule#8 share information. Power comes from sharing information. Sharing leads to connections, connections leads to collaboration, collaboration leads to creativity and innovation. Creativity and innovation are what change the world. Lack of sharing information kill innovation in big companies. Rule#9 Fail fast. Failure is a fact of life. The most important thing is to learn from failure, however, you have to do it fast. If you fail, give it up, and move on to the next thing that can be successful. Rule #10 experiment. In 2014, was the time where Marissa had to do a lot of different experiments. They experimented with some live content with Live Nation, and had a lot of editors in different verticals work in their own series and clips of what they wanted to work on. Those experiments made yahoo find out what people interact to more and what they are into and what they are not into.

Summary#3 Video # 4 Reflections on women in science -- diversity and discomfort

Jocelyn Bell Burnell talks about her experience about women in science.         She is originally from northern Irish, came from the loagan area while also starting her secondary education in Loagan. She obtained a physics degree at Glasgow University, she was the only women in the honors class. Bell suffered from isolation while getting her degree so she has to work very much on her own. Her main goal was to become an astronomer, preferably a radio astronomer, therefore she received a PhD in Cambridge. Throughout her working life she has been either one of very few women or the most senior women in the place. Her number at the Open University doubled the number of female professors of physics in the country from one to two, yet, she became the first female president of the institute of physics of UK and Ireland. Bell talks about astronomy today around the world. According to the international data compiled by the international body, the worlds average size of the astronomical community is 15 percent. In research science, particularly when we have an economic recession, science technology engineering math’s are incredibly important to help build a smart economy to get us out of trouble. A research group in science that is diverse strong brings more creativity, more flexibility, more success because of the diversity and the range of ideas and people coming at it from different angles. However, the easiest group to manage is a group of people that think alike in our context which is white males with similar backgrounds. Yet on the other hand, a diverse group is much harder to manage and the members of a diverse group and members of a diverse group some will see it as exciting but others will find it uncomfortable and threatening just depends on your temperament. When you are trying to grow a diverse community is to be able to hear what those people from the different backgrounds are saying, you need to be able to listen and hear, and also understand their experience. Encouraging women to apply for jobs promotion funding and so on will help our culture to be equal between men and women.  

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